British vocalist Juliet Kelly’s latest album is dedicated to her favourite books, featuring songs inspired by Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and a cover of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights. Polar Bear drummer/producer Seb Rochford imaginatively mixes the wordless, Beloved-inspired track Ghosts – an evocation of a lost spirit that features Kelly drifting through a dark landscape visited only by Nick Ramm’s empathic piano undertow, Oli Hayhurst’s bass and Gilad Atzmon drummer Eddie Hicks’s brushwork. Ramm’s synths quietly weave behind Kelly’s unfussy account of Wuthering Heights, while producer Dilip Harris brings edginess to the pulsing Devilish Disguise, and a spooky urgency into All He’ll Ever Need, which is inspired by The Time Traveller’s Wife. Forbidden Fruit, the Walker dedication, finds Kelly at her most improvisationally open over Ramm’s pumping Hammond organ. Kelly has been a well-kept secret of the UK scene for some time, but the honesty and charm of Spellbound Stories might change that.
